A new toothless pterosaur (Pterodactyloidea) from Southern Brazil with insights into the paleoecology of a Cretaceous desert

Abstract

The first pterosaur bone bed from Brazil was reported in 2014 at the outskirts of the town Cruzeiro do Oeste, Paraná State, in the Southern region of the country. here named `cemitério dos pterossauros´ site, these outcrops were referred to the Goio-Erê Formation (turonian-Campanian) of the Caiuá Group (Bauru Basin) and revealed the presence of hundreds of isolated or partially articulated elements of the tapejarine pterosaur Caiuajara and fewer amounts of a theropod dinosaur. here we present a new tapejaromorph flying reptile from this site, Keresdrakon vilsoni gen. et sp. nov., which shows a unique blunt ridge on the dorsal surface of the posterior end of the dentary. Morphological and osteohistological features indicate that all recovered individuals represent late juveniles or sub-adults. This site shows the first direct evidence of sympatry in Pterosauria. The two distinct flying reptiles coexisted with a theropod dinosaur, providing a rare glimpse of a paleobiological community from a Cretaceous desert.

New anatomical information onDsungaripterus weiiYoung, 1964 with focus on the palatal region

“…They also show a developed lateral process of the pterygoid dividing the subtemporal opening in two fenestrae, with the anterior part called secondary subtemporal fenestra (Kellner, 2013). These shared palatal features between Dsungaripterus and azhdarchoids agrees with their close relationships advocated by several phylogenetic analyses (Kellner, 2003(Kellner, , 2004Unwin, 2003;Wang et al, 2009;Lü et al, 2010;Pêgas, Leal & Kellner, 2016;Holgado et al, 2019;Kellner et al, 2019). Notwithstanding, there are differences among the palate of these three species.…”

“…Lastly, the presence of at least two pterosaur taxa in the same localities (Dsungaripterus weii and Noripterus complicidens) might be a case of sympatry of pterosaur species, as has been recently reported in Brazil (Kellner et al, 2019). More field work in necessary regarding the Chinese deposits to confirm if these two taxa indeed occur in the same horizon or if they come from different layers.…”

First complete pterosaur from the Afro-Arabian continent: insight into pterodactyloid diversity

“…The sole other derived pterodactyloid with a comparable dentition is Haopterus gracilis , first regarded as an archaeopterodactyloid 26 , later as an ornithocheroid close to Istiodactylidae 28 , and even the sister taxa of Ornithocheiroidea 13,19 . Here we recovered Haopterus at the base of Laceodontia as in more recent phylogenetic analyses 34,35 , forming a clade with Mimodactylus libanensis (Fig. 4a; see Supplementary Information for further details).

Figure 4An overview of Mimodactylus libanensis gen. et sp.

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Taxonomy of the Lonchodectidae (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea)

“…Lonchodraco giganteus was found as a sister taxon to Ikrandraco avatar in the analysis by Zhou et al (2019). These two taxa form a polytomy with the clade Ornithocheirae in the analysis by Kellner et al (2019b). The mentioned phylogenetic analyses suggest that the Lonchodecti dae are part of the ornithocheiroid radiation, likely the sister taxon to the Anhangueria.…”